Drag queen-turned-transgender fashion model Carmen Carrera is firing back at RuPaul this week, as what has been coined “the tranny discussion” enters shady territory.

Carrera has been credited with contributing significantly to the escalation of the controversy surrounding the words “tranny” and “shemale” as used in gay drag culture. Back in April, an Out blogger attacked RuPaul and RuPaul‘s Drag Race for being “transphobic” after an episode featuring the word “she-male” was aired, but it was Carrera who first suggested the iconic Drag Race phrase “you’ve got she-mail” was transphobic and not fit to air.

Logo responded to criticism by immediately yanking the word from future and existing episodes of RuPaul‘s Drag Race, going so far as to remove previous episodes from their online archive altogether. RuPaul responded for the first time last week in a podcast interview with Marc Marron: “If your idea of happiness has to do with someone else changing what they say, what they do,” he said, “you are in for a fucking hard-ass road.”

“Bitch, you need to get stronger. If you’re upset by something I said you have bigger problems than you think,” he finished. Logo responded by blasting the comments as “anti-trans rhetoric,” and after, San Francisco drag queen Heklina notified fans on Facebook that “the tranny discussion” forced her into changing the name of the historic roving drag show Trannyshack.

Yesterday, Carrera fired back at RuPaul‘s most recent comments, posting a blasphemous photo depicting RuPaul as a sheep on Facebook. Though RuPaul does not identify as a sheep, Carrera blatantly misclassified him by Photoshopping his face onto the body of a sheep running off a cliff. “Follow the leader…” the caption reads.

Carrera’s behavior has encouraged other trans activists, including performance artist Justin Vivian Bond to publicly come out in support of RuPaul. In an open letter condemning Carrera’s “harassment,” Bond said “People think you are a tranny it’s because you are perceived as one. OWN IT!”

Those sentiments are being echoed in a YouTube video posted by Vine celebrity and adult performer TS Madison, a transgender woman who has documented her transition on social media. The 10-minute video below, which had scored a whopping 14,000 views at time of posting, is a frank and abrasive message to the trans antagonists who called TS Madison “not authentic” for defending use of the word “tranny.”

“Don’t try to attack Miss RuPaul in reference to the shemale situation,” she says. “Be happy for her! Be glad that this bitch [expletives] is the reason your ass stood there on a platform and revealed to us who you were, and were able to tell your fucking story!”

Yes. Those are lemmings. Not sheep. Unless sheep also have a tendency to be small and brown and follow each other off of cliffs…..

May 28, 2014 at 4:06 pm · @Reply ·

Teeth

I think Carmen’s campaign to get into VS is pretty much over. I doubt that they will want to touch her now- it would have been a huge deal to have a transperson in their ranks– but i am sure that they will pick someone who is less of a distraction.

May 28, 2014 at 5:12 pm · @Reply ·

Dez

Seriously Carmen- GET A LIFE!

Know your enemy. It’s not RuPaul!

May 29, 2014 at 7:38 am · @Reply ·

Cam

Ru had been using the terms for years before Carmen tried, out. She was on the show, got famous because of it, and NOW comes out and says it is offensive? If it offended her so much why did she go on the show in the first place???

May 29, 2014 at 11:12 am · @Reply ·

thiskat

This video was one of the most powerful things I’ve seen. So much honesty about the layers of race, class and privilege, as well as an acknowledgement of the evolving practice of naming and self-identification. All of these layers have to be included if we’re going to have a real conversation.